Monday, July 23, 2018

Chio-chan is running a little late to school again. She had stayed up all night again, playing online games. She takes a back alley to school only to find a motorcycle gangster sitting there, his bright pink motorcycle blocking the way. To make it worse, a salaryman is making his way through the same alley coming from the other side. As the two of them squeeze past each other, Chio-chan accidentally burns her leg from the bike's muffler. Her scream of pain draws the attention of the gangster. The salaryman panics and makes a run for it. As Chio-chan tries to call after him, she accidentally elbows the gangster in the face, knocking him out. Then, Chio-chan accidentally pushes his bike to the ground. When the gangster comes, Chio-chan is forced to adopt a tough persona to deter the gangster from beating her up. She introduces herself as "Bloody Butterfly" and claims that she's packing heat and shooting up foreigners all night. In truth, Bloody Butterfly is her online handle and she plays an online first-person shooting game against international players. She manages to convince the gangster enough for him to drive her to school.

Chio-chan and Manana are walking to school together when they notice that everybody in school seem to have coupled up. Except them. They soon find themselves walking behind Hosokawa and a dude and they assume the two are a couple. They are surprised though when Hosokawa and the dude disappear into an alley. Thinking that they're up to sexytimes, Manana goes after them to sneak a peek and Chio-chan follows along. While there, they witness Hosokawa turn the dude down, saying she wants to focus on track. The dude takes the rejection well enough and suggests that Hosokawa introduce him to her friends. This prompts Hosokawa to start talking about Chio-chan, which flatters Chio-chan and makes Manana jealous. As Hosokawa and the dude make their exit, they inevitably walk past Chio-chan and Manana, who are forced to hide their spying by pretending to make out.

One day, Chio-chan finds not just Manana but Hosokawa waiting for her to walk together to school. It turns out that Hosokawa figured out that Manana was Chio-chan's friend and befriends her also. As the three of them walk together, Manana makes small talk, starting with asking Hosokawa if she's still a virgin, much to Chio-chan's horror. Hosokawa says she's not experienced and throws the question right back to Manana. Manana reveals that she has kissed a college boy, to Chio-chan's shocked surprise. As the two girls walk on, talking about Manana's experience, it dawns on Chio-chan that Manana was trying to ingratiate herself to Hosokawa's affection and use this as a stepping stone in her ambition to become one of the popular girls in school. Manana tries to boost her image in front of Hosokawa by putting down a random dude standing by the side of the road. But the dude turns out to be a friend of Hosokawa's -- someone she has befriended while on a run. Chio-chan makes fun of Manana's fail and Manana later confesses that she lied about the college boy to impress Hosokawa. Chio-chan, however, is just relieved that Manana didn't really make out with a pedophilic college boy. This leads them to realize that the dude might be lying. When they confront him, the dude immediately confesses his lie but Hosokawa takes no offense, saying only that the distance he ran was not a lie. Then she suggests they run together, much to Chio-chan and Manana's confusion although they do as told.

COMMENTS:
Chio-chan is such an awkward nerd. Manana is a manipulative social climber. But the two of them know each other's failings so well and there's genuine affection there. Hosokawa seems like a genuinely cool gal, but we don't know what she's thinking. Is she faking it? Or is she genuine? Lots of funny stuff. I am still enjoying this show.

Sunday, July 22, 2018

Two girls, the energetic Hanako and the self-proclaimed foreign exchange student, Olivia, are playing a game in a classroom that is empty except for the two of them and one other classmate. This classmate, Kasumi, gets irritated by their noise but after taking practical considerations decides to join in. It turns out that Kasumi has been doing badly in English and wants to Olivia to teach her the language. Olivia, however, has been only pretending to be bad at Japanese -- because although her parents are both foreigners, she was born and raised in Japan and knows little English. But she keeps up the pretense as she's enjoying fooling Hanako too much and gets reluctantly drawn into really intense games with Kasumi. Eventually the three of them form a club for their past-time.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

I don't really know how to recap this series, so I don't think I'm gonna blog about it. But I enjoyed the first episode. I appreciate slapstick humor and the super-deformed style, as you can see. And the girls have enjoyable personalities. It's not as funny as Chio-chan, which I actually want to blog about, but it is still fun and light and an easy watch.